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Hating Israel Isn’t New; How the CIA and State Department Undermined the Jewish State
“Teddy Roosevelt’s great-great-great grandson is an anti-Israel protester at Princeton,” blared a New York Post headline on May 4, 2024.
The Post reported that Quentin Colon Roosevelt, an 18-year-old freshman, and descendant of the 25th President, is an anti-Israel activist at the Ivy League university. But far from being hip and new, Quentin’s brand of anti-Zionism is old hat — he is merely continuing a long family tradition of anti-Israel activism.
There is an abundance of literature on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s views on Jews and Zionism, the belief in Jewish self-determination. Both FDR and his wife Eleanor had made antisemitic remarks. In a private conversation in 1938, then-President Roosevelt suggested that by dominating the economy in Poland, Jews were themselves fueling antisemitism. And in a 1941 Cabinet meeting, FDR remarked that there were too many Jewish Federal employees in Oregon. In his final days, FDR promised Saudi leader Abdul Aziz Ibn al Saud that he would oppose the creation of Jewish state in the Jewish people’s ancestral homeland.
FDR is the president who led the United States to victory against Adolf Hitler. He also employed Jews in high-ranking positions in his government. But he is also the president whose administration failed to save more Jews fleeing Nazism, and who refused to bomb the railway tracks leading to Auschwitz and other death camps where millions of Jews met a ghastly end. Accordingly, it makes sense that his beliefs regarding Jews have been the subject of books and belated study.
Less examined, however, is the Oyster Bay branch of the Roosevelt clan, and their beliefs regarding Zionism. In part, this is easily explained by the unique place that FDR holds in American history. He is the only president to serve four terms, and presided over both the Great Depression, World War II, and arguably the beginning of the Cold War. His branch of the family, the Hyde Park Roosevelts, were Democrats and remained active in public life for decades after his 1945 death.
At first glance, the Oyster Bay Roosevelts were more of a turn of the 19th century affair. They were Republicans, and their scion was Teddy Roosevelt, a war hero turned governor of New York state who, thanks to an assassin’s bullet, found himself as the nation’s leader in 1901.
The famously ebullient Roosevelt helped redefine the country’s idea of a president, and served as an inspiration for his cousin Franklin. But Teddy largely presided over an era of peace and tranquility, not war and upheaval.
Teddy was a philosemite. He was the first occupant of the Oval Office to appoint a Jewish American to the Cabinet. He championed the rights of Jews, both at home and abroad, and was harshly critical of the numerous pogroms that unfolded in czarist Russia.
As Seth Rogovoy has noted, Roosevelt’s “special relationship with Jews was forged during his time serving as police commissioner in New York City, a post he assumed in 1904.” When an antisemitic German preacher named Hermann Ahlwardt gave speeches in the city, Roosevelt assigned a contingent of Jewish police officers to guard the man.
Roosevelt was also a Zionist. In 1918, shortly after the Balfour Declaration, he wrote: “It seems to me that it is entirely proper to start a Zionist state around Jerusalem.” He told Lioubomir Michailovitch, the Serbian Minister to the United States, that “there can be no peace worth having … unless the Jews [are] given control of Palestine.” Six months later Roosevelt died in his sleep.
Not all his descendants would share his belief in Jewish self-determination, however.
Two of Teddy Roosevelt’s grandchildren, Kermit and Archie, served their country in the CIA during the early years of the Cold War. Both were keenly interested in Middle East affairs, and were fluent in Arabic. Both were well read and highly educated, authoring books and filing dispatches for newspapers like the Saturday Evening Post, among others.
They were also prominent anti-Zionists.
Kermit Roosevelt, known as “Kim,” played a key role in anti-Zionist efforts in the United States and abroad. He was not, by the standards of his time, an antisemite. But he was ardently opposed to the creation of Israel.
As Hugh Wilford observed in his 2013 book America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East: “the anti-Zionism of the overt Cold War foreign policy establishment is well known” but “less widely appreciated is the opposition to Jewish statehood of the individuals responsible for setting up the United States’ covert apparatus in the Middle East.”
This began with the OSS, the CIA’s precursor. And it included men like Stephen Penrose, a former American University of Beirut instructor, and Kim Roosevelt’s boss during his wartime service in the OSS.
“Documents among Penrose’s personal papers reveal him engaged in a variety of anti-Zionist activities at the same time that he was commencing his official duties with the OSS,” Wilford notes.
Like many of his fellow Arabists, Penrose was the son of American missionaries who, failing to convert the native population to Christianity, sought to foster Arab nationalism instead. Penrose described himself as a “chief cook” who was “brewing” opposition to Zionism. He became one of Kim Roosevelt’s mentors.
In a January 1948 Middle East Journal article entitled, “Partition of Palestine: A Lesson in Pressure Politics,” Kim called the 1947 UN vote in favor of a Jewish state an “instructive and disturbing story.”
Roosevelt believed that the US media was unduly supportive of the creation of Israel, and claimed that almost all Americans “with diplomatic, educational, missionary, or business experience in the Middle East” opposed Zionism.
Kim’s pamphlet was reprinted by the Institute for Arab American Affairs, a New York-based group whose board he sat on. He also began working with the Arab League’s Washington, D.C., office and “turned elsewhere for allies in the anti-Zionist struggle, starting with the Protestant missionaries, educators, and aid workers.”
This nascent group soon received financial support from the American oil industry, which maintained close links to Kim’s OSS/CIA colleague, William Eddy.
As Wilford noted, the Arabian consortium ARAMCO “launched a public relations campaign intended to bring American opinion around to the Arab point of view.”
In addition to missionaries and big oil, Kim gained another important ally in the form of Elmer Berger, a rabbi from Flint, Michigan. Berger served as executive director of the American Council for Judaism, an anti-Zionist group that, among other things, opposed the creation of a Jewish army during World War II at the height of the Holocaust. Berger and Roosevelt became drinking buddies and close collaborators on their joint effort against the Jewish State.
Kim eventually became “organizing secretary” for a group called The Committee for Justice and Peace. The committee’s original chair, Virginia Gildersleeve, was both a longtime friend of the Roosevelts of Oyster Bay and the dean of New York City’s Barnard College, which today is part of Columbia.
Gildersleeve was “also a high-profile anti-Zionist” who “became involved with the Arab cause through her association with the Arabist philanthropist Charles Crane and the historian of Arab nationalism George Antonius.”
Crane, a wealthy and notorious antisemite, had lobbied against the creation of a Jewish state since the beginning of the 20th century, even advising then-President Woodrow Wilson against supporting the Balfour Declaration.
By 1950, the Committee had managed to recruit famed journalist Dorothy Thompson to their cause. Thompson was reportedly the basis for actress Katharine Hepburn’s character in the 1942 movie Woman of the Year. A convert to anti-Zionism, Thompson’s extensive network of reporters and celebrities proved crucial to Kim and Berger’s efforts to rally opposition to the Jewish State. In a 1951 letter to Barnard College’s Gildersleeve, Thompson wrote: “I am seriously concerned about the position of the Jews in the United States.” People, she claimed, “are beginning to ask themselves the question: who is really running America?”
Another ally emerged that year: the Central Intelligence Agency.
The CIA began funding the Committee, as well as its successor, the American Friends of the Middle East (AFME). Beginning in June 1950, Kim’s correspondence with Berger began making veiled references to the ACJ head taking on “official work” in Washington. This, Wilford believes, is a reference to working with the CIA. Indeed, the well-connected Kim and Archie Roosevelt had known top CIA officials like Allan Dulles since childhood.
With support from figures like Eddy, AFME also began encouraging Muslim-Christian alliances — ostensibly to counter Soviet influence, but also to attack the Jewish state. This led to some awkward alliances, including with Amin al-Husseini, the founding father of Palestinian nationalism and an infamous Nazi collaborator.
Husseini had ordered the murders of rival Palestinians, incited violence against Jews since the 1920s, and had led forces, equipped with Nazi-supplied arms, to destroy Israel at its rebirth in 1948. Now, along with the Secretary General of the Arab League, and Saudi King Ibn Saud, he was meeting with Eddy to discuss a “moral alliance” between Christians and Muslims to defeat communism. Kim himself knew Husseini, having interviewed him for the Saturday Evening Post after World War II.
AFME lobbied for the appointment of anti-Zionist diplomats and in favor of Eisenhower administration efforts to withhold aid from Israel. And both Berger and Thompson pushed for favorable coverage of the new Egyptian dictator, Gamal Nassar, who would wage war on the Jewish state for nearly two decades. Initially, they were successful, with TIME magazine writing that Nasser had the “lithe grace of a big, handsome, all-American quarterback.” Of course, there was nothing “all-American” about Nasser, who would become a Soviet stooge.
AFME officials like Garland Evans Hopkins would draw rebukes after claiming that Jews were bringing violence against themselves — a staple of antisemitism. Hopkins claimed that Zionists “could produce a wave of antisemitism in this country” if they continued acting against “America’s best interests in the Middle East.”
AFME itself would eventually lose influence, particularly after its boosting of figures like Nasser was revealed as foolhardy. Berger would go on to advise Senator J. William Fulbright (D-AR) in his efforts to get pro-Israel Americans to register as foreign agents.
In 1967, as Arab forces gathered to annihilate Israel, Berger blamed the Jewish State, accusing it of “aggression” and its supporters of “hysteria.” Top ACJ officials resigned in protest. That same year, Ramparts magazine exposed CIA support, financial and otherwise, of AFME.
Kim and Archie Roosevelt, however, would continue their careers as high-ranking CIA officers before eventually starting a consulting business and making use of their extensive Middle East contacts.
For some college protesters, attacking Israel — and American support for Israel — might seem new and trendy. Yet, both the CIA and big oil were precisely doing that, decades ago, forming alliances with anti-American dictators, antisemitic war criminals, the press, Protestant groups, academics, university administrators, and fringe Jewish groups claiming to represent “what’s best” for American Jewry.
As William Faulkner once wrote: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
The writer is a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis
The post Hating Israel Isn’t New; How the CIA and State Department Undermined the Jewish State first appeared on Algemeiner.comhttps://www.algemeiner.com/.
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The woodcutter and the water carrier in the Torah portion, Nitzavim
לעילוי נשמת מײַן באָבע מנוחה וויטקא ע״ה לזרוב, לכבֿוד איר יאָרצײַט, ט״ו אלול
איינער פֿון די שטאַרקסטע קעגנער מיט וועמען אַ מענטש דאַרף זיך אויסקעמפֿן איז…זיך אַליין.
די סיבה איז פּשוט: די געדאַנקען און געפֿילן וואָס אַ מענטש קען צום בעסטן, זענען זײַנע אייגענע. און ווײַל דאָס זענען זײַנע פּערזענלעכע געדאַנקען און נײגונגען, איז מען נאַטירלעך גענייגט זיי צו געבן אַ גרויסע חשיבות. אויב איך פֿאַרשטיי אַזוי, אָדער איך פֿיל אַזוי, איז דאָס שוין לכאורה אַ גענוג גוטע סיבה צו טאָן אַלץ וואָס איך קען כּדי אויסצופֿירן מײַנע געדאַנקען און באַפֿרידיקן מײַן ווילן.
אָבער זייער אָפֿט טרעפֿט דווקא דאָס פאַרקערטע. דער מענטש וואָס שטעלט אויס זײַן לעבן בלויז לויט דעם וואָס אים דאַכט זיך ריכטיק אָדער באַקוועם, קען צום סוף שאַפֿן געלעגנהייטן וואָס גייען ווײַט העכער פֿון זײַנע באַגרענעצטע און פֿאַרבײַגייענדיקע פּערזענלעכע געפֿילן.
מיט אַנדערע ווערטער, באַקוועמלעכקייט און צוגעוווינטקייט קענען זײַן די גרעסטע שׂונאים פֿונעם מענטשן, אַנשטאָט זײַנע מיטהעלפֿער.
אין דער סדרה פֿון דער וואָך, נצבים־וילך, ווענדט זיך משה רבינו צום ייִדישן פֿאָלק אַזוי:
„אַתֶּם נִצָּבִים הַיּוֹם כֻּלְּכֶם לִפְנֵי ה׳ אֱלֹקֵיכֶם… מֵחֹטֵב עֵצֶיךָ עַד שֹׁאֵב מֵימֶיךָ“ — איר שטייט הײַנט אַלע פֿאַר דעם אייבערשטן, אײַער ג־ט… פֿון דײַנע האָלצהעקערס ביז דײַנע וואַסער־שעפּערס (וואַסער־טרעגערס).
דער גרינדער פֿון חב״ד, רבי שניאור זלמן, באַקאַנט ווי דער אַלטער רבי, דערקלערט אַז דאָס האָלצהאַקן און וואַסער־שעפּן האָבן, אויסער זייער פּשוטן באַטײַט, אויך אַן אינערלעכן טײַטש אין דער פּערזענלעכער עבֿודה פֿונעם מענטש.
דער אויסדרוק „עֵצֶיךָ“, דײַן האָלץ, קען מען אויך פֿאַרשטיין ווי „עצותיך“, דײַנע אייגענע עצות, געדאַנקען און חשבונות.
דאָס „וואַסער“ איז מרמז אויף דעם יסוד המים פֿונעם נפֿש הבהמית — דער מקור און טרײַבקראַפֿט פֿון קערפּערלעכע תּענוגים.
די לערנונג, זאָגט רבי שניאור זלמן, איז אַז אַ מענטש דאַרף „אויסהאַקן“ די אייגענע חשבונות און „אויסשעפּן“ די תּאוות וואָס צילן בעיקר אויף פּערזענלעכע קערפּערלעכע הנאות.
ערשט ווען אַ מענטש קען נייטראַליזירן אָט די צוויי כּוחות און זיך נישט לאָזן פֿירן פֿון זיי, קען ער צום בעסטן מקיים זײַן זײַן שליחות אין לעבן — אָן דעם שוחד פֿון פּערזענלעכער באַקוועמלעכקייט. שוחד פֿאַרבלענדט דאָך די אויגן און לאָזט ניט זען קלאָר און אָביעקטיוו. דאָס זעלבע טרעפֿט מיט באַקוועמלעכקייט. עס לאָזט ניט טראַכן אָביעקטיוו.
מען וואָלט אָבער געקענט מיינען אַז אַזאַ דיסציפּלין איז שייך בלויז צום תּורה־לערנען, צו מענטשן וואָס פֿירן אַ רוחניותדיק לעבן, אָדער בלויז ווען אַ מענטש וויל מצליח זײַן אין זײַן אייגענער גײַסטיקער זוכעניש.
וואָס איז אָבער מיט מסחר, פּרנסה אָדער אַ פּראָפֿעסיע — מיט די לכאורה „נישט־רעליגיעזע“ געביטן פֿון לעבן? דאָרט מעג מען דען נישט טאָן וואָס מען אַליין האַלט פֿאַר ריכטיק און וואָס גיט פּערזענלעכע צופֿרידנקייט?
דער ליובאַוויטשער רבי — זכותו יגן עלינו — ווײַזט אָן אַז דער ענטפֿער אויף דער פֿראַגע ליגט שוין אינעם פּירוש רש״י אויפֿן פסוק.
ווער זענען געווען די דאָזיקע האָלצהעקערס און וואַסער־שעפּערס?
רש״י דערקלערט אַז זיי זענען געווען כּנענים וואָס זענען געקומען צו משה רבינו ע״ה מיט דער כּוונה זיך מגייר צו זײַן, און משה האָט זיי באַשטימט צו דינען ווי האָלצהעקערס און וואַסער־שעפּערס.
דער רבי ווײַזט אן אַז דאָס וואָרט „כּנעני“ מיינט אויך אַ סוחר.
דער רמז איז, אַז נישט בלויז ווען עס רעדט זיך וועגן הימלישע און רוחניותדיקע ענינים — „רעליגיעזע“ באַשעפֿטיקונגען — דאַרף מען זיך באַפֿרײַען פֿון פּערזענלעכע אינטערעסן, צי שׂכלדיקע צי פֿילעוודיקע.
אויך אין מסחר, אין אַלע ענינים וואָס האָבן צו טאָן מיט גשמיות און מאַטעריע, דאַרפֿן די „האָלצהעקערס“ און „וואַסער־שעפּערס“ גיין צו דער אַרבעט.
מען דאַרף זיך העכערן איבער די אייגענע חשבונות און תּאוות, און זיך אָפּגעבן מיט די גשמיותדיקע טעטיקייטן מיט דער כּוונה, אַז דורך זיי זאָל מען אַרײַנברענגען הייליקייט און ג-טליכקייט אין דער וועלט — דורך דעם ליכט פֿון דער תּורה און דער נפֿש האלוקית.
עס זענען דא מענטשן וואָס קענען דאָס באַטראַכטן ווי אַ באַגרענעצונג: „מען לאָזט מיר נישט טאָן וואָס איך וויל.“
מען קען דאָס אָבער באַטראַכטן גאָר אַנדערש — ווי אַן אויסערגעוויינטלעכע געלעגנהייט:
„שטענדיק — אַפֿילו אין די מערסטע וועלטלעכע און לכאורה נישטיקע טעטיקייטן — האָב איך די מעגלעכקייט צו דערגרייכן עפּעס וואָס האָט אַן אומענדלעכע און אייביקע ווערט.“
דעריבער איז די געצײַג פֿון דער וואָך:
אויב דו פֿילסט זיך שלעכט ווײַל עס דאַכט זיך דיר אַז אַ גרויסער טייל פֿון דײַן לעבן האָט נישט קיין באַזונדערן זין אָדער ווערט, געדענק אַז עס ליגט אין דײַנע הענט צו באַשליסן אין וועלכער ריכטונג דו וועסט גיין.
דו קענסט צייכענען דײַן וועג לויט דײַנע פּערזענלעכע געדאַנקען און געפֿילן, וואָס קומען און גייען און לאָזן נישט קיין אייביקע שפּור.
אָדער דו קענסט זיך באַפֿרײַען פֿון זייער הערשאַפֿט און זיך אָפּגעבן מיט עפּעס וואָס איז אַ טייל פֿון אַ ציל וואָס איז אומענדלעך גרעסער — און אומענדלעך מער ווערטפֿול.
The post The woodcutter and the water carrier in the Torah portion, Nitzavim appeared first on The Forward.
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Vance, who’s drawn ire of Jewish conservatives, will speak at Republican Jewish confab
(JTA) — Vice President JD Vance, who has drawn the ire of a number of Jewish conservatives, will speak at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit in Las Vegas on Monday, the RJC confirmed.
“The Republican Jewish Coalition is proud to welcome Vice President JD Vance to our National Leadership Summit in Las Vegas,” said an RJC spokesperson. “JD Vance is a friend, who is coming back after first joining us in 2022 as a candidate for the US Senate.”
Vance’s appearance comes as a number of Jewish Republicans and major GOP donors have indicated that they would rather support Marco Rubio for the presidential nomination in 2028 than Vance, who is seen as Donald Trump’s likeliest successor. Some of those donors will be in the room on Monday at the Venetian Resort, which is owned by the billionaire Adelson family — a major backer of Trump and various Jewish and Israeli causes.
The vice president has lost the confidence of the pro-Israel crowd with his reprimanding of Israeli officials, indulgence of anti-Israel conspiracy theories and silence on Tucker Carlson, the prominent pundit who has spread antisemitic conspiracy theories. Multiple donors told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency during last year’s confab that they would not support Vance in 2028.
Carlson, meanwhile, was a major focus of the discussion at the RJC’s 2025 summit, where signs reading “Tucker is not MAGA” were handed out to attendees. His son, Buckley Carlson, is a former Vance staffer.
An agenda sent by the RJC lists Vance as a speaker during a Monday evening session that will be closed to press. A spokesperson confirmed that Vance will be speaking in a “fireside chat.”
A number of high-profile Republican candidates are also expected to speak at the RJC confab, which is being held on Sunday and Monday, a few months ahead of the midterm elections. Speakers include U.S. Senate candidates Mike Collins, the Georgia congressman who is challenging Jewish Democrat Jon Ossoff, and former Rep. Mike Rogers, who is running against Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
Collins has faced accusations of antisemitism and having ties to the far right. He has said that some of his statements were misunderstood, and has defended himself by citing his support for Israel.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Israeli expats push for voting rights in Oct. 27 election
(JTA) — When Ilana Mittman, a retired social scientist with American and Israeli citizenship, began arranging a trip to Israel from her home in Baltimore, she planned to observe her late father’s Yahrzeit and cast her ballot in the national elections on Oct. 27. Checking her voter registration status online, she made a startling discovery: She had been excluded from the voter registry and was ineligible to vote.
The discovery came as a shock. Mittman’s mother was born in pre-state Palestine. Her parents had drained swamps in order to create arable land and served in the Haganah pre-state military organization.
Mittman has lived in the United States since 1980, having moved for her husband’s medical studies and career. But she has never viewed her life abroad as severing her ties to Israel. She watches television in Hebrew, follows the country’s news, stays in frequent contact with family, donates to the country’s emergency services and engages in pro-Israel advocacy efforts.
“I didn’t really choose to leave the country; I fell in love with a man who came from overseas, and I followed him,” she said. “I’ve grieved for the loss of my country and my friends … It’s been a constant, chronic sorrow.”
Puzzled by the discovery of her voter status, Mittman reviewed her records through the Ministry of Interior online portal and noticed that on March 7, 1986, her residency status had been altered under administrative “Code 51.”
That date matched a visit to the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco shortly after the birth of her son, where she went to register him as an Israeli citizen in accordance with consular requirements. She said that during that routine appointment, consular staff took away her state-issued ID card without explanation, leaving her with only her passport for foreign travel.
“I remember how bad of a feeling it was to give that document away,” Mittman recalled. “I felt I gave a part of myself away when that happened. But I didn’t know that my biggest right as a citizen – the right to vote – was just robbed from me.”
When she spoke with friends in the expat community, it turned out that others had found themselves in a similar situation. Some only made the discovery after they had already made expensive travel arrangements to return to Israel for the election, since voting must be done in person.
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Under Israel’s Basic Law: The Knesset, every Israeli citizen aged 18 or older has the right to vote, unless a court has deprived them of that right. In practice, however, voting is limited to those included in the voter registry.
Israelis whom the government classifies as nonresidents are assigned a designation known as Code 51 and removed from the voter registry, even though they retain their citizenship.
As expats across North America, Europe, Australia and South Africa began to realize in the lead-up to the October vote that they were no longer in the voting registry, they began comparing their experiences in a WhatsApp group that grew to some 120 members.
Some, like Mittman, had not voted in Israel for decades. Others, like kibbutz-born Ayala Graham, had returned to vote in the previous elections, held just four years ago. Yet others retained their eligibility, such as Graham’s husband, who hadn’t cast a ballot in Israel in four decades.
“My blood is boiling from this situation,” said Graham, who left Israel in 1986. “I am a citizen through and through, and I was very offended by this arbitrary rejection. I feel that in these elections, the situation is even more acute than in 2022.”
With the grounds for rescinding voting eligibility opaque and no easy path to appeal the exclusion, the disenfranchised Israelis decided to pursue legal action. They are calling the grassroots initiative to restore their voting eligibility “Our Right to Vote – Code 51.”
To challenge the Code 51 exclusions, the group raised money for legal representation through crowdfunding. Then they initiated a multi-stage legal strategy designed to exhaust administrative remedies before escalating to Israel’s Supreme Court.
Represented by attorney Gilead Sher, they submitted a Freedom of Information request to compel the Israeli Ministry of Interior to disclose the criteria behind the administrative “Code 51” designations. Then they sent letters to the Ministry of Interior, the attorney general and the Central Elections Commission requesting the immediate restoration of their status.
The Israeli Ministry of Interior has not yet responded to the group’s letter about Code 51, the criteria used to remove expats from the voter registry, or the total number of citizens affected by the regulation.
Israeli Ministry of Interior spokesperson Yaffa Shai did not address questions about the meaning of Code 51 posed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Instead, she pointed to Israeli election law, which requires voters to be listed in the Population Registry as residents, with an address in Israel, and stressed that the ministry had conducted “an extensive multilingual campaign” urging citizens to check their voter status.
Since the law requires that the voting registry be finalized on Sept. 3, the legal team set a one-week deadline for administrative responses. If the matter remains unresolved, they intend to file an emergency petition directly with the Central Elections Commission and the High Court of Justice.
There is no known official count of how many Israeli expats have been excluded from the voter registry. “We received a rough, totally unofficial estimate of several dozen thousands, out of whom we represent about 120,” said Sher, the lawyer.
He stressed that there is also no clarity regarding the criteria used to remove citizens living abroad from the voter registry. “Our argument is that whatever this arbitrary Code 51 stands for or signifies, it cannot override the constitutional right to vote,” he said.
Sher acknowledged the possibility that some expats who travel to Israel to vote may only discover their status on election day. Given the tight timeframe before the election, Sher is seeking both temporary relief and an interim injunction in the petition to ensure eligible citizens are not disenfranchised while bureaucratic procedures are reviewed.
‘Essentially voter suppression’
On the West Coast, another Israeli expat, Silicon Valley attorney Rony Sagy, was struck by the arbitrariness of the system, particularly given her past travels to Israel during election cycles.
For the IDF elite unit veteran, maintaining a close connection to Israel has been consistent over decades of living in the U.S. Her career as a San Francisco–based lawyer has included serving as a legal bridge between Israeli startups and American tech companies, and she travels to Israel several times a year, renews her passport and keeps a permanent address in the country.
She suspects that her name was removed from the voter roll following a routine consulate visit for passport renewal sometime in the 1980s, during which she was required to surrender her domestic Israeli ID card. She noted that the experience was difficult enough for someone with deep connections to the country, but the lack of transparency surrounding the act added insult to injury.
“Voting was always very, very important to me,” Sagy emphasized. “My understanding was that my voting rights would not be hampered by the confiscation of my ID card. The uneven, unidentified way or form of removing certain people from the voter rolls is essentially voter suppression.”
The debate over Israeli citizens’ inability to cast ballots from abroad with limited exceptions (for example, official government representatives stationed abroad), has been ongoing for decades. Proponents of overseas voting note that most Western democracies allow it. Opponents argue that the large number of Israelis living abroad could potentially sway an election, even though those living in Israel bear the consequences of its outcome more directly.
Public opinion in Israel on overseas voting is split, though polls typically focus on whether expats should be allowed to cast ballots from abroad rather than retain their eligibility to vote if their center of life is elsewhere.
A survey last year by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 51% of Israelis opposed allowing citizens living abroad to vote from overseas, while 39% supported it. Opposition was particularly high among Arab respondents – 55% opposed, 36% supported – relative to Jewish respondents. Among Jewish respondents, opinion was evenly divided, with 45% supporting and 45% opposing overseas voting.
Attitudes were also strongly associated with respondents’ own willingness to leave the country. Among Israelis considering moving abroad, 52.5% supported overseas voting and 40% opposed it, compared to 34% support and 55% opposition among those not considering leaving Israel.
Members of the group challenging the denial of their eligibility to vote point to the global economy, which facilitates remote work, as well as the rising number of Israelis who have left the country since Oct. 7, 2023, due to Israel’s enmeshment in several regional wars. Some have deliberately chosen to disconnect. Mittman, however, believes that the number of years spent living abroad should not define the strength of one’s connection.
“What do you mean by center of life?” she asks. “If I spend hours a day immersing myself in Israeli culture, if I am supporting friends and relatives in Israel and charitable causes in every way I can … I feel that my heart is there, that I’ve never ceased to be an Israeli. So, what does it mean to be a citizen if you cannot vote?”
She insisted that this initiative to restore expats’ voting rights is not partisan: “If somebody told me today that I can vote, I don’t know who I’m going to vote for. I have not decided.”
Regardless of whether the legal challenges are resolved ahead of the election, she plans to make the trip, spending election day volunteering to help elderly and mobility-impaired voters reach their polling stations.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israeli expats push for voting rights in Oct. 27 election appeared first on The Forward.
